Born in Australia and based in Hong Kong, Royce Ng started his practice strictly as a visual artist before venturing more recently into performing arts. His work features a strong visual component constructed through various digital media technologies such as 3D animation, VR and holograms and deals with the intersections of modern Asian history, technology, drugs and aesthetics.
In 2016, Royce inaugurated Museum of Opium, a trilogy looking at the spectres that haunt the economy of modern East Asia and the darkly ambiguous legacy of opium in the development of the Asian state. His first stage performance, Kishi the Vampire, delved into the life of Japanese colonial administrator, war criminal, and then prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, narrating his convoluted history as a vampire story, inaugurating It was followed by Queen Zomia, a performance tracing the histories of opium through the figure of Olive Yang, the bisexual, cross-dressing warlord who controlled the illicit opium and heroin trade in the Golden Triangle.
While the third instalment of this trilogy is planned to premiere in 2025, Royce developed Presence in 2021, a piece dealing with the concept of presence in technology, clearly resonating with the consequences Covid in our societies.